Hello, 2-3-06 My name is Gary and I am Wes' Father. Along with my wife, Michele (Wes' mother), we are Wes' caregivers.
On 1-31-05 Wes was the victim of a criminal assault. He was stabbed numerous times and as a result he had to be resuscitated in the ER.
Wes spent six months in hospitals including over four months in rehab.
To date, no arrest has been made in his case.
Wes suffers from Anoxic Encephalopathy, has limited use of his arms and legs with lots of spasticity problems and has difficulty with speech and swallowing. His cognitive abilities are good. He is taking Didronel(for H.O.), Baclofen, and Ritalin.
He has been home for six months now and has gone to physical, occupational, and speech therapy. We work with him daily doing range of motion, standing, speech and vision exercises, His G-tube was removed a month ago and we're managing to keep up his calories with protein shakes and a variety of regular foods.
Wes has a wonderful girlfriend named Nicole. She was with him the night of the assault and saved his life by driving him to the ER instead of waiting for an ambulance. She works as a paramedic and knew Wes had a severed artery is his arm and that he would likely bleed to death if they waited for an ambulance.
In the ER Wes had emergency surgery to stop the blood flow from a knife wound to his liver.
We were told after 10 days of being unconscious, that Wes' brain would never be able to do more than keep his body alive. Both his surgeon and a neurologist told us we should pull the plug.
As I write this, Wes is in the living room laughing while laying on the couch watching the comedy channel.
Wes will be 30 years old this month and we are both in our 50s. A little over a year ago, Wes was working as a firefighter in Amador County, California and we were living in Port Angeles, Wa. Wes was still furnishing the house he bought the previous summer and we were planning our upcoming retirement. With one phone call everything changed.
Now we all live in Wes' house. Nicole is here most of her none working time and Wes' brother, Dylan, lives about ten miles from here.
We're glad we found this support site and hope that we can share with, and learn, from many of you

Email Wesley